A cancer survivor who feared her illness had come back described the moment she discovered she was actually pregnant with a miracle baby.

Sarah Pickles, 35, from Skelmersdale , was alarmed when she began to suffer back problems and went to hospital for a scan.

She had been through gruelling chemotherapy and a mastectomy for breast cancer two years earlier, and had got the all-clear after all seven tumours were removed.

The teacher and her husband Dave, 42, were told she had just a 1% chance of conceiving after the chemotherapy, but had begun trying IVF.

The mum, who already has a seven-year-old daughter, Lillie, said she was surprised when she went for the scan over her back and was told by a Macmillan nurse she should have a pregnancy test.

She said: “She asked if I thought I was pregnant - I said no, definitely not I can’t get pregnant.

“Ten minutes later she came back in with a pregnancy test that I had done and I think she was a bit scared to tell me because of what I had said to her but she eventually said, ‘you’re pregnant’.

“I didn’t know what to say. I had gone from having these tests and getting reassurance that everything was ok to this. My husband was half way up Everest base camp at the time, leading an expedition, when I told him.

“So he was there and I was here, pregnant with this miracle pregnancy. It was just meant to be.”

“After what we’ve been through together, it’s just perfect.

“Percentage wise, we were told that the chances of us getting pregnant after chemotherapy was probably about 1%.”